The baba is often served at Easter in Poland, with the most extraordinary version – the muslin baba – made from a rich dough of flour, yeast, butter and quite a lot of egg yolks.
Depending on where it’s baked, the baba or babka takes on many different forms.
In the US, it’s a braided brioche-like bread that often has chocolate, nuts or other ingredients mixed in. Europeans might be more familiar with baba au rhum, a desert popular in France and Italy that is soaked in liqueur and served in individual portions.
The original recipe for muslin baba is often credited to the 19th-Century food writer and journalist Lucyna wierczakiewiczowa, an extremely popular and successful cookbook writer at the time. In other words, making baba was serious business.
Muslin baba recipe: Ingredients 24 egg yolks, 300g sugar, setting aside 1 tsp, ½ cup lukewarm milk, 60g fresh yeast (or substitute 21g of instant yeast instead), 250g flour, setting aside 1 tsp of flour, 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out (or substitute 1 tsp vanilla extract), 100g butter, melted, plus more for the Bundt pan, lemon glaze (optional), candied orange or lemon peel (optional, for decoration).
Method
Step 1: In a heated bain-marie, beat the egg yolks and sugar (what remains after separating out 1 tsp) until white and fluffy. The original recipe calls for half an hour by hand with a whisk but with an electric mixer, 10 minutes should be enough. Set aside to cool.
Step 2: Heat up the milk until lukewarm and add the yeast, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp flour. Let rest until bubbly, around 5 minutes.
Step 3: Add this mixture, with the remaining flour and vanilla bean seeds or vanilla extract to the egg yolks and sugar and beat for another 10 minutes.
Step 4: Add the melted (but not hot) butter, beat for another 10 minutes, then leave the dough to rest in a warm place until doubled in size. The dough will be loose, more like a cake batter than yeast dough. (You won’t be able to knead it, not by hand and not with the dough hook. Even the stretch-and-fold technique, typically used when handling wetter doughs, will fail here.)
Step 5: When it has doubled in size, carefully transfer it to a buttered 4-liter-sized Bundt pan.
Step 6: Allow it to rest in a warm spot until the dough has risen out of the form. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 170C/340F.
Step 7: Carefully transfer the baba to the hot oven and bake for 35-40 minutes but keep a good eye on it as the high amount of egg yolk and sugar may cause it to burn easily. A toothpick inserted into the baba should come out clean. Allow to cool. Remove from the pan, then decorate with lemon glaze (a mix of lemon juice and powdered sugar to taste), or candied orange peel if you wish. (bbc)